The Derry Girls Are Right

A piece from The Guardian argues that:

The Derry Girls Are Right – a boycott won’t change Northern Ireland abortion law.

In a significant move, both Disney and Netflix are considering pulling productions out of Georgia. After a number of states – such as Alabama, Ohio, Mississippi, Kentucky and Missouri – attempted to roll back abortion rights, campaigners and prominent cultural figures across the world have been scrambling to use their power and status to fight back against the archaic anti-women proposals.

But there is a wild inconsistency in this strain of activism, and a sour sense of irony for the women of Northern Ireland who endure some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world. It is from Northern Ireland, with its population of around 1.9 million, that 28 women a week travel elsewhere to access abortion. It is in this country that people have been prosecuted for aiding terminations, and houses and workplaces have been raided by police for abortion pills. And it is here that women are denied the same healthcare access as their counterparts in the rest of the UK, despite paying into the same National Health Service. Yet the draconian laws and those who suffer under them rarely make international headlines.

Few of the British and European figures who are shouting about American abortion rollbacks have shown the same fervour for human rights abuses closer to home: when English actor Sophie Turner signed a pledge not to work in US states with strict abortion laws, the fact that she had spent several years in Northern Ireland shooting Game of Thrones seemed to be forgotten – as a subsequent backlash highlighted.

The purpose of raising this isn’t for mere “whatabouterry”, pitting Georgia against Northern Ireland. The truth is, the most restrictive abortion laws in the US can’t be implemented without toppling Roe v Wade in the supreme court, yet in Northern Ireland harsh laws have been encroaching on people’s human rights for decades: so where is the same collective urgency about this homegrown problem?

Continue reading @ The Guardian.